The irony was not lost when Bob Dylan performed his protest songs at the Troy Armory (a military installation).

Bob Dylan

By Walt Dierks / The Polytechnic Volume LXXXV Number 13.

The young man with long, brown, curly hair, dressed in a plain brown jacket and slightly rumpled blue pants strode on to the stage and began singing “The Times They Are A ‘Changin’.” Even the terrible acoustics of the Troy Armory couldn’t completely garble the voice of Bob Dylan.

Few men of his age are as controversial as this young folk singer, and his actions disappointed neither his admirers nor his detractors. His style was the same as that on his records: a combination of guitar and harmonica, of singing and talking in a voice that is … well, typically Bob Dylan. The result of all these cannot be described; it must be

heard to be believed. The first time one hears him, the reaction will probably be one of distaste, but this usually passes quickly and the listener begins to understand, at least a little bit, that this man does have talent.

Dylan’s most well recelved songs were his comic ones, for example, “The John Birch Society Paranoid Blues,” “Love Minus Zero To The Ninth Power,” and “After Talking World War Three Blues,” where he sticks a barb into everything from the political lunatic fringe to that famous American export Rock ‘n Roll.

A good part of the dozen or so songs that Dylan sang were protest in nature, the type for which he is so famous, or infamous, depending on your viewpoint. It seemed rather ironic to hear “With God On Our Side,” a cry against the lunacy of war, being sung in a military installation such as the Armory.

Dylan’s performance is not carefully planned and smoothly executed to be a crowd pleaser like that of, say, the Smothers Brothers. He has a tendency to mumble his introductions, if he bothers to give one, and his style of running words together is fine for recordings, but the quality of the amplifying equipment of the Troy Armory just isn’t sufficient to produce an Intelligible reproduction. Due to his mumbling and the fact that he simply omitted two verses from “After Talking World War Three Blues,” it is being charitable to call him a careless performer.

The fact of the matter is that Dylan’s great, and in fact monumental, talent lies in his writIng ability. He Is one of the few men alive today writing ranges from poetry, examples of which adorn his record jackets, to protest songs such as “It’s All Right Mom, I’m Only Bleeding,” to beautiful ballads like “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right.”

Dylan performed last Friday night as though he really didn’t care what people thought of him. This, too, is typically Bob Dylan.